Quincy's O'Brien not guilty of bribery while probation chief

Wednesday

Apr 17, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 17, 2013 at 5:04 PM

A jury acquitted former state probation commissioner John O'Brien of Quincy on Tuesday of conspiring to host a fundraiser for former state Treasurer Timothy Cahill in exchange for his wife landing a job at the state Lottery.

Jack Encarnacao

A jury acquitted former state probation commissioner John O’Brien of bribery on Tuesday, the latest failed attempt by Attorney General Martha Coakley to secure convictions against state officials from Quincy on public corruption charges.

After a 13-day trial, a Suffolk County jury took only a few hours to return a not-guilty verdict in favor of O’Brien, who prosecutors said organized a 2005 fundraiser for former state treasurer Timothy Cahill in exchange for O’Brien’s wife getting a job at the state Lottery.

O’Brien was charged with conspiring to bribe a public official via the June 2005 fundraiser, which was held at Pat Flanagan’s Pub in Quincy and raised $11,100 for Cahill’s campaign committee.

O’Brien’s wife, Laurie O’Brien, began working as a customer service representative at the Lottery three months after the fundraiser.

“There was no agreement, there was no conspiracy,” O’Brien’s lawyer, Paul Flavin, said in his closing arguments Tuesday. “Mrs. O’Brien should be insulted that her husband is here, charged with doing something illegal to get her a job that she was qualified for, that she interviewed for, that she was a perfect fit for.”

The case was tried by the Public Integrity Division of the Attorney General’s office, which Coakley formed in Feb. 2011 following reform to the state ethics law.

“We are disappointed in this verdict and believe the evidence showed that Commissioner O’Brien traded campaign contributions for a taxpayer-funded job for his wife,” Coakley said in a statement following Tuesday’s verdict. “While some may believe that this type of behavior is ‘business as usual,’ we did not and do not believe that should be the case.”

Last year, Coakley secured indictments against Cahill and two of his top aides, Scott Campbell and Alfred Grazioso, all of Quincy, in connection with a $1.5 million Lottery ad campaign prosecutors said benefited Cahill’s failed 2010 bid for governor more than it did the Lottery.

Cahill’s trial resulted in a mistrial, and last month he agreed to pay a $100,000 civil penalty to prevent a retrial. The former Quincy city councilor said the outcome was vindication, but acknowledged in the settlement that he should have known the ads were improper. Grazioso paid $10,000 in court costs and the attorney general's office dropped its case on obstruction of justice charges connected to the investigation of the Lottery ads.

Campbell was acquitted as a co-conspirator in the advertising case, but still faces charges in relation to the O’Brien investigation.

Prosecutors allege Campbell told O’Brien that Cahill would appreciate a probation-sponsored fundraiser after O’Brien inquired about a job for his wife, a former Quincy Public Schools employee.

O’Brien was appointed state probation commissioner in 1998. He resigned in 2010 after an independent counsel concluded he oversaw a rigged hiring system in which the politically connected were hired over more qualified candidates, and winning candidates were often selected before interviews were conducted.

O’Brien and two of his probation deputies, Elizabeth Tavares and William Burke, still face racketeering charges in federal court related to U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz’s investigation of probation department hiring practices.

O’Brien’s lawyer, Paul Flavin argued that the testimony of a key prosecution witness, former deputy commissioner Francis Wall of Quincy, couldn’t be trusted.

He told the jury Wall had given conflicting statements about how hiring worked in the probation department, and tried to get others in the department to align with his account of events, something Flavin said Tavares refused to do.

“She knew, as we all know, that patronage is not a crime,” Flavin told the jury. “You may not like patronage, I may not like patronage. I’m not here to defend it, you’re not here to judge it.”

Flavin said Wall, who reached an immunity agreement in exchange for his testimony, was facing jail time for perjury and the loss of his pension. He called Wall’s testimony that the 2005 Cahill fundraiser was expressly held in appreciation for O’Brien’s wife being hired was “one tightly-wrapped, perfectly-crafted lie.”

“In one sentence, Mr. Wall conveniently covered all the elements needed to indict Mr. O’Brien,” Flavin said. “It was the story the government needed to indict Mr. O’Brien, and it was the lie that Mr. Wall needed to tell to get himself out of a lot of trouble.”

Flavin also questioned the veracity of testimony from Edward Ryan of Quincy, another lieutenant of O’Brien’s, who was put in charge of organizing the Cahill fundraiser in question, which Flavin said was a routine event and not related to Laurie O’Brien’s hiring.

Prosecutor Peter Mullin defended the witnesses in his closing arguments, telling the jury that it was no coincidence that some 50 probation department employees attended the Cahill fundraiser.

“The evidence in this case was overwhelming,” he told the jury. “What was going on here, ladies and gentlemen, was not right.”

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Reach Jack Encarnacao at jencarnacao@ledger.com or follow on Twitter @JackE_Ledger.